This Lambertville dog is a decorated veteran

Monday

JIG is a retired Military Working Dog who spent six years on the front lines of America's War on Terror as part of the Marine Corps.

When Tracy Spader looks at her 11-year-old dog, JIG, she doesn’t see his ailments.

Granted, there are too many of those. JIG suffers from oral melanoma, laryngeal paralysis with polyneuropathy and post traumatic stress disorder. He also has heart problems.

But none of that matters to the Lambertville woman. Above all, her big, gentle, lovable Labrador retriever is a war hero.

“Being a military family, we know what these dogs do for our sons, daughters, husbands and wives,” Spader said. “They’re on the ground with them out there.”

JIG is a retired Military Working Dog (MWD) who spent six years on the front lines of America’s War on Terror as part of the Marine Corps.

He recently was honored for his service.

On May 22, JIG was bestowed the 2018 American Humane Lois Pope K-9 Medal of Courage, which is presented to just five retired military dogs each year.

The prestigious awards were presented to this year’s recipients at a Capitol Hill ceremony, but due to his health issues, JIG was unable to attend the event.

“Only five of these dogs get this award a year,” Spader said. “It’s really something.”

JIG served as improvised detection during his time with the Marines. His job was to seek out concealed explosives.

But beyond that, Spader says she wasn’t told much about her beloved dog’s military service.

“When you adopt him, they don’t give you all that nice information you wish you had,” she said. “I know what he did, but like handlers or exactly where he was, any specific missions he did, they don’t give you that. There is a group of old Vietnam veterans that will go into the paperwork and find that for you, and I asked them to do that but they were not able to find anything on JIG.

“They think maybe perhaps some of his missions were classified.”

This is the second retired military dog that Spader and her husband, George, have adopted. Their first was Buddy, who died in 2013.

“We seem to get the ones that have some medical issues that people don’t want to take on,” she said. “We’re a military family, so it was just something we just felt compelled to do.”

The Spaders’ son, Brandon, serves in the Air Force.

“I know when he goes out on missions that he usually has a team of four dogs,” Spader said. “He’s always telling me ‘Mom, I’ve got four dogs with me.’ He knows that makes me feel better because it’s huge. They know and can smell out things that we have no idea are there until it’s too late.”

Spader explained that the chance to nominate JIG for the Medal of Courage practically fell into her lap.

American Humane contacted her out of interest in her nonprofit organization called K9 Defender Fund, through which she provides care packages and equipment to military and law enforcement K-9 units across the globe.

The organization had noticed some information about JIG on the website and suggested she enter him for consideration for the Hero Dog Awards, an annual nationwide competition designed to honor America’s most exceptional canines. JIG is one of the top three finalists in the military category.

“They contacted me and asked me to be a partner with my nonprofit,” Spader said. “If you’re a partner and your dog wins their category, then your nonprofit receives $2,500. If they win Top Dog, you get $5,000.”

As Spader was entering JIG for the Hero Dog Awards, organizers for American Humane’s Medal of Courage program noticed his paperwork and suggested she also submit him for consideration for that honor as well.

“That one, there’s no voting,” she said. “They have a panel that determines (the winners). They ask for all his paperwork, his retirement papers ... Then I had to write an essay, he had to have served in a forward operating station, he had to be alive at the time of nomination and they can’t be being used for police work or anything. They have to be retired.”

Spader said she was compelled to do her part to have JIG’s efforts recognized after witnessing his battles through his health issues. During a particularly difficult bout with aspiration pneumonia in December, JIG spent eight days in the critical care unit of Michigan State University’s Veterinary Medical Center.

The Spaders feared they’d never bring JIG home again, but he wouldn’t give up.

“I call it his warrior heart, just the determination and the love that he would have when we would come up and visit him,” she said. “ You could just see it in his eyes, he’d struggle to get himself up even when he had no strength to get up.

“Just that something could love you so much that you just hope you’re worthy of that, and just what he’s done for the country. It was because of how he has been through this whole thing, the fight I saw.”

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